I was
talking with an old friend recently, a master of oceangoing tugs. The
topic was commercial shipbuilding and how there's precious little
of it going on in the United States these days. After grumbling over this
travesty for a while and then bemoaning the fact that the American Merchant
Marine seems to be headed down the same rusty scupper that swallowed so
many shipyards, we cheered ourselves up with an argument. What material
should American ships be made of, if America ever goes back to seriously
building them? Steel or the other biggie, aluminum?

"Deep
water dictates steel," my friend concluded. A conservative, seaman-like
position. With more holes in it than an old deck shoe.

"Yeah,
but look at crewboats...they're aluminum," I countered. "More
than 100 feet long, some of them. Fast and efficient. Running offshore
in outrageous sea conditions. For years. Then reincarnating in the Caribbean
as dive boats and ferries."

The
tussle went on all evening. It was fun. In fact it was so entertaining
that I resolved to apply it to the realm of custom yachts as soon as possible.
With yacht builders and designers being at least as intense about building
materials as my friend and I, doing this required little effort. I simply
ran the aluminum-versus-steel thing past a few major-league yards in the
States and Europe, and presto! Clash of the Titans.

I started
with Dick Boon, probably the biggest booster for all-aluminum custom yacht
construction in the world today. Founder and president of Vripack
Yachting International, a well-known Dutch design firm with a long,
salty resume and a raft of big-name clients like Palmer
Johnson and Feadship, Boon is
certainly qualified to be taken seriously. And he's serious about
all-aluminum construction, not only for high-performance applications
where weight is an issue, but also for larger, heavier, full-displacement
craft that are normally built with steel hulls and steel or aluminum superstructures.
It's this all-aluminum, displacement-hull idea, which Boon pushes
with messianic fervor, that flies in the face of accepted belief. For
years most experts have agreed that because of its greater weight and
strength, steel is the safest, most stable material for building ships
and big displacement yachts.

"But
this is not true," says Boon, citing a list of successful all-aluminum
projects like Palmer Johnson's La Baronessa and his own Doggersbank
Series as well as pages and pages of test data and calculations. "Aluminum
is better for big yachts. Even very big yachts. The Japanese, for example,
are doing all-aluminum tankers right now. Of 90 meters [about 295 feet]
or so. If a big commercial vessel can be built, why not a big yacht?"